BEAVeR

To all agents currently on mission in the Black Sun crime syndicate: Your mission has come to an end. Try to leave the oranisation without raising too much questions. You will be held accountable for any further actions of criminal nature you undertake. In the next couple of days, we'll be evaluating the effect of the mission on the Black Sun's interests. Keep yourself ready for your next assignment. Over and out.

It's the 26th in this part of the galaxy. This means you have about a day and a couple of hours before the sun sets on this episode.

Announcement The mission hasn't achieved the results that ware aimed for... Therefore, the factions postpone their 'move' by a week to give the agents more time to build work for the Black Sun just that little bit more to gain their trust, and in the hopes that agents that got sidetracked might still achieve some success in the mission. So agents, instead of on September 19th, your assignment ends on September 26th. Give them everything you've got.

Better hurry up if you still want to participate in this episode: the 19th is coming pretty close! Or are you all still in deep-cover, so that you can't talk about your missions ? I won't tell anyone.

Gorgeous ship you designed and built here! I love how you didn't loose yourself in superfluous greebles or ultra-fine texturing, but instead decided to flesh out the shape of the ship to perfection. With small ridges and extra angles everywhere, who needs that distracting stuff? You all dosed it just right to get a beautiful, strong looking vessel I wouldn't like to encounter after midnight. I'm also a big fan of the asymmetry and the unique color scheme, those nice facets at the sides (I wasn't even aware of that part's existence!), the fact you have two boarding ramps, and I am baffled by the idea no one ever came across that great bench design you have in the interior. It's an excellent ship from the first stud to the last . Sadly, there's still a small amount of areas that aren't on par with the rest of your ship. Those exposed Technic beams fail to come across as details and appear as just an artifact of the build. Using pegs and tiles and/or inverted plates would already make it look a lot better. And you still have some right angles in the back. Normally, they wouldn't appear that "bad", but in this creation with all of its subtle angles they stand out. That square pattern of tiles on the rear hatch, for instance, could be either replaced by a smoother SNOT section, or just hidden away behind some ledges coming forth from the angled panels above. The end of that steel column could feature some greebles/pipes to smooth it off and to give it meaning. The flat area at the side of the back could feature another protruding panel to break it up some more and keep the overall subtlety of the ship going. These little points of improvement can only be seen from the non-standard point of view. So, on first sight it already is breathtaking. But just a little effort could make your creation a beauty from every angle, making everyone grab into his/her monitor to turn it around and swoosh it in all directions. That would be just perfect... Awesome job! I'm really looking forward to admiring your next creation from even more angles.

No, changing your build no matter how drastically is no problem at all. You're right that your creation is still a WIP (though not for too long as the episode is coming to a close in less than a week!). And since in this episode the timing, category etc. of your build are irrelevant, it's okay to change it however you want. So go ahead! I'm curious to see what you make of it.

That's exceptional, The Librarian! You didn't just create an excellent rendition of the Gauntlet, you gave it some more character. You made this ship quintessential Mandalorian, hunting, predating... perfect elegant brutality. I love how you show us that not sticking exactly to the source material, but interpreting it, can lead to some spectacular results in the hands of an artisan. It begins with the ship being blue. I like to think you started with the idea of "I'm going to build a ship in blue", and then immediately thought of the Mandalorian armor, which lead to this ship. Anyway, it's great that you paired the color with this ship. Because having such a primary color is pretty boisterous. It means you don't rely on stealth or the element of surprise. It show you're confident in getting the better of any opponent, by mere force, skill and swag. The stripes of red add on top of that some more. So it's great how you managed to make something this unusual work to great effect. I hope it inspires many to take bolder steps to create better MOCs. One of the things I would suggest is to use your design to accentuate certain elements. In this instance, the eyes of the viewer are drawn to the red stripes. It's a bit of a pity they lead your eyes to a meaningless spot on the wings. What you could have done instead, is having the point be near the cannons, so that the eyes of the viewer are led to the offensive part of the fighter, highlighting the character of ship even more, just in the unlikely case people don't get it already. You could also have use the trick of using accentuated lines to guide the viewer with the red stripes on the side of the fuselage. Right now there's a single stain of red that actually more distracts the viewer than aids him. If instead you would have made a stripe (a thinner one would look better, I guess) that leads to the front, to the main guns, you once again accentuate what's important. Something else that's important to determine the general feel of a ship, is the cockpit, because we people see it as the face of the ship, and as with humans, it is where we read emotions etc. The trans orange looks good, but the shape isn't aggressive enough. When you think of aggressive, you think of sharp, pointy things: fangs, teeth, claws. Here, that isn't really present in the cockpit. You could have used a pointier windscreen, or finished something you actually already started. You put that blue 2x4 tile on the cockpit, probably to camouflage the studs. Right now, the right angles look kind of strange, so in plain sight. The point is, you could have made it pointier to the front, giving the cockpit more of a frown, more squinted eyes you automatically associate with menace. So if you want to add more personality, you have to treat your ship more like a person with a face. And to make people see what you want, just put subtle arrows in place. And then there's color, shape, details, backstory, but you've already mastered those areas expertly. So keep on going! I'm excited to meet your next model!

Great work, Scrubs! I don't know how you get your renders so realistic. I'm working in Blender as well, with skyspheres, the same bevel script and all... but I'm still in awe of what you're capable off. What is your secret? And just a small question: do you use a Fresnel node in your materials to get more realistic bricks? There actually exists a Blender add-on that imports LDraw models. Since you can export models from LDD to LDraw pretty easily (especially when you use this resource to fill in parts that are available in LDD but not in LDraw), it's a pretty easy solution to render your LDD models. You can find the official converter here. I also modified it of my own, but some of the features are pretty dirty and add a lot of extra geometry (logo on the studs). You can find it here.

It's okay if your entry is clearly connected to one of the objectives. For the smuggling, you can depict the character receiving the goods, transporting them, delivering them, getting in trouble with them... For intelligence, you could show your character spying, reporting, eliminating... For military, you could show your character preparing, entering the battle field, fighting... These are only examples, so there are plenty of opportunities, as long as your story connects to one of the objectives.

As always, it's important to follow the spirit of the law instead of the letter of it (of course I don't have to tell a lawyer about that ). To give some background, the rule you quoted was installed in order to ensure that every entry entered in SoNE was built specifically for it. It's there to prevent people from constantly reusing the same vehicle they built a year ago. It's to prevent quick, lazy entries. SoNE is supposed to be about having fun building and telling a story together. It isn't about prestige, about XP. We just hope you're all having a good time. And that rule is a certain view of that idea. Returning to your question. I checked out the Colossal Battle Contest I think you're referring to. The objective of that contest and that of ours seem perfectly compatible (at least, if you choose the military power category in this episode), so you're building that creation with our rules and objectives in mind. Therefore, it will be perfectly acceptable for you to enter your creation in two contests at the same time. In fact, if you were able to do two things at once, you wouldn't even be violating the rule. But as you can't do that, let's say there's a certain margin on that 'prior' . So the short answer is yes, you can. But by giving this background information, I hope everyone has a framework to think about what is and isn't possible here. Don't be afraid to consult us, however!

Stunning creation, LiLmeFromDaFuture! It's amazing how you can still build such an impressive representation of a vehicle we all know so well and have seen represented countless times. Your version just stands out. It's very tight, with the SNOTted wings, the perfectly offset cheese slopes that form a uniform casing, the shape of the heat sink perfectly flowing into the rest of the model... There isn't a part that doesn't look finished and that I love (except for the controls in the cockpit maybe, but you might have hit the limitations of the brick there. And there's also that gap on the backside between the cheese slope and the larger slope, but that really is everything!). I loved watching the progress on your creation, getting every aspect just right, taking your time to craft the perfect creation. I hope everyone can see the dedication. Usually, I give suggestions to improve the creation, but there's barely something I can think of with this creation: you used those 486 elements perfectly. So hat off! I can't wait to see you tackle something larger, like that AT-AT you mentioned. I'll be patient .

Nice small creations, LegoPercyJ! Posting several builds together is not a problem at all. Usually, people refrain from it because two reasonably models usually get higher scores together than one big build, but when the builds involved are this small, it isn't that advantageous. Posting the first build here separately, could only give you 1 XP (it literally being a minifig on a plate, with not much of a story). Since you only have a limited number of freebuilds each episode, it's better to make them as good as possible. So there are plenty of examples of people posting several builds together (by Ninja Nin, goatman461, ...) What's more, the idea isn't to get as much XP as fast a possible. We want you to have fun building and telling stories, developing yourself, learning from others. I'm personally not in particular against small builds, but more against rushed builds. Here at SoNE (and I believe everywhere in the AFOL community), we believe in quality over quantity. So take your time to create something worthwhile, and you'll see the award will be greater than just some extra XP. So if you decide to have these builds judged together (and judging by your next freebuild, you have), please edit the first post in this topic to contain all the scenes (preferably with story ), so the judges don't miss all of the things you created. And if you still have those pieces put together, I'd recommend taking clearer pictures, maybe even with a darker backdrop, so that we can better see what's happening and don't get snow-blind . Enjoy your SoNE experience!